It was ten years ago
today, the Chicago Marathon in a sauna.
How could I forget, sitting there at a softball field in Joliet watching
my daughter hit?
October 8, 2007, dawned
warm and sunny, with the temperature eventually hitting an all-time high for
that date of 87 degrees. We were out in
God’s country for Clare to play fall ball with her high school team. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law Charlie was
making his debut as a forty-something marathoner.
As hot as it was for a
marathon, that kind of weather is nothing new for high school softball (and,
yes, baseball) players. In-season, they
play games with the temperature at or just below 40 degrees. Try hitting or catching or throwing (or
watching kids doing some combination of that) with a nasty northeast wind
blowing off Lake Michigan, where I swear icebergs go to die. Then, a couple of months later, these same
kids are playing travel ball under extreme summer conditions. In fact, that summer Clare had ended her
season with a super tournament in Kansas City, where the temperature flirted
with triple digits, with the humidity right behind. Just for fun, Clare had to play one game on
an AstroTurf infield. Talk about
fun. It shimmered.
That said, running in
heat and humidity is no picnic. There
was a point where officials borrowed a page from auto racing and basically shut
the course down so people could cool off.
So, my wife was trying to follow her brother’s progress as well as that
of her parents, who were both in their seventies at the time; Bob and Merle
wanted to see their boy run, heat or no heat.
Me, I basically kept one eye on Michele and the other on Clare hitting.
Everyone made it to
their respective homes in one piece, as I recall. We were walking back to the car when Euks,
Clare’s varsity coach, told her how lucky she was to have parents like us. It must have been the heat talking.
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